Small Wonder : A Balboa Island Church, Amiable and Comforting, Is Happily Stuck in a Bit of a Time Warp

On Balboa Island, the difference between a frozen banana and religion is about 20 steps. Pop culture food for the body at 310 Marine Ave. and more traditional food for the soul two doors away at 314.

And the island landmarks that dispense both are about the same size.

It is easier to spot the frozen banana joint, though. After all, Sugar ‘N’ Spice is notable for the huge banana sign that soars over the sidewalk, and St. John Vianney Catholic Church is surely the least gaudy structure on the entire street. The architecture is unpretentious and uncomplicated and the dominant color is a generic beige that, on the main shopping and restaurant thoroughfare of Balboa Island, might as well be camouflage paint.

But before beach-goers ever heard of the now-trademark frozen banana, before the rows of boutiques dotted Marine Avenue, before Balboa Island began to settle under the weight of shoulder-to-shoulder high-ticket Cape Cod houses and the neighborhood was not much more than a sparsely developed sand spit, the 28 pews in St. John Vianney were full.

It was 50 years ago that the tiny church was established and began to see the first arrivals of the Mass-goers for whom it was built: vacationers. At the time, the only Catholic church in the Newport Harbor area was the parish of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, which sat--and still sits--about halfway down the Balboa Peninsula. For weekend and summer visitors to the island, getting to the peninsula church could be a bit of a stretch, particularly when gasoline rationing was instituted after the outbreak of World War II.

A kind of annex to Our Lady of Mount Carmel was needed. So, a small plot of land on Marine Avenue was acquired from two local families for the now-unheard-of price of $1,975. And in August, 1941, a mission chapel was dedicated to the French priest St. John Marie Vianney, patron saint of parish priests.

It wasn’t supposed to be a separate parish, and it still isn’t (today, the chapel is affiliated with Our Lady Queen of Angels Church about a mile inland in Newport Beach). Still, over the years St. John Vianney has acquired the atmosphere not only of a distinct parish but of a local institution. And each Sunday morning, both of its Masses continue to be attended by dozens of Catholics who are unswervingly loyal to the little church, and have been for generations.

They keep coming back for the same reason that Cliff and Norm keep showing up at “Cheers”: it’s cozy, it’s amiable, it’s comforting, everybody knows everybody, and the place is stuck in a bit of a time warp.

Several of today’s local parishioners first came to Mass at St. John Vianney half a century ago as weekend and summer vacationers from outside of Orange County. To Yvonne Dooley, 74, the chapel brings back memories of lazy days and movie stars during the war years.

Dooley’s family stayed in a vacation house on the peninsula, but she said she and her sister went to Mass at St. John Vianney rather than the closer parish of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in part because they were star struck.

“My family lived in Los Angeles then, and we vacationed here in the summer,” said Dooley. “It used to cost a nickel to ride the (Balboa Island) ferry, and we used to swim across the bay to save the money for ice cream. Back then the chapel was sort of an orphan in a way. There was just one Mass on Sundays, but we used to always come hoping to see some celebrities.”

Dooley and her sister would drive across the then-log bridge onto Marine Avenue in hopes of catching a glimpse of regular vacation church-goer and movie actress Anita Page, or any other familiar Hollywood face. Balboa was then a haven for a handful of stars and hangers-on who retreated from the close scrutiny of Los Angeles for the relative obscurity of Balboa.

Veteran parishioner Al Bartolic, 63 of Newport Beach, said he remembers seeing tough-guy actor George Raft at Mass. Today, said Bartolic, Hollywood has largely stayed away from Balboa Island and St. John Vianney. One familiar summer face, however, is UCLA football coach Terry Donahue, who, said Bartolic, shows up for Mass nearly every summer Sunday.

Many parishioners today arrive at Mass in the same way they did 50 years ago: on foot. Also, said Mary Barrett Blake, whose contractor father helped raise money and build the chapel, many of the faithful during the war years arrived on the island on Sunday mornings by sea to save precious gasoline during rationing.

“You could actually come to Mass in a boat,” she said. “And the people who come here have been coming for generations because it still retains the charm and the history of the beach. People still come from all over, not just the island.”

Blake is one of them. She lives in Irvine but can’t bring herself to stay inland and give up the family tradition of attending services at St. John Vianney.

“It’s always retained that wonderful old beach feeling,” she said. “You can go to Mass in jeans and shorts in the summertime.”

Casual?

Yes.

Progressive?

No.

Several church-goers on a recent Sunday said that part of the enduring appeal of St. John Vianney lies in its concessions to tradition. The current administrator of the chapel, Msgr. Joseph Sharpe, is their hero.

Sharpe is a bit of a contradiction. The soft-spoken 77-year-old priest, a former Navy chaplain, is no fan of what he considers some of the more unappealing innovations in the Catholic liturgy. Mostly, he says, he’s “not much for guitar Masses.”

Instead of folk songs accompanied by guitars, St. John Vianney has stuck with a small choir, which on occasion even sings part of the liturgy not in the modern vernacular, but in the traditional Latin.

But, far from being a retiring, mystical cleric, Sharpe is a man of the world who happens to work in a very small church. His Masses are direct and correct, but hanging from a coat hook in his sacristy is a rather jaunty souvenir from Pope John Paul’s visit to Los Angeles: a Secret Service baseball cap.

In another way, Sharpe’s feet are decidedly not on the ground. He is licensed to fly both helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, and actually flew a Beechcraft Bonanza around the world in 1978. He did it, he said with a small smile, “because I never believed the world was round. I always thought it was flat and I wanted to see for myself.”

Also, this traditional priest does not live in a rectory--the tiny St. John Vianney has never had one--but in a condominium in Costa Mesa that was financed by his sister. His predecessor, he said, lived in a Balboa Island apartment above a garage.

His work at the chapel, said Sharpe, “isn’t very challenging, but it’s very personalized. This island is particularly friendly.”

It’s difficult to avoid being friendly at Sunday Mass. The chapel is simply too crowded--standing room only--and with good reason. In 1941, there were 51 families that regularly attended Mass at St. John Vianney. Today there are more than 600. And that number doesn’t include summer and weekend vacationers who still use St. John Vianney as their occasional parish.

What they see when they arrive is one of the most physically basic churches in the county. Beneath a wooden peaked roof supported by wooden crossbeams and white textured plaster walls are the original 28 well-worn pews, about all the chapel can hold. The pews are original, as are the 14 stations of the cross, spaced in some cases only inches apart on the facing walls.

The sanctuary is not much bigger than a large niche, and there is not enough room for both the small choir and the organ on the single riser in the back of the chapel. The choir squeezes into a tiny area against the opposite side of the back wall. And, after Mass, socializing can spill over the sidewalk and into the street.

Improvements to the chapel were made during a restoration in the mid-’70s, which included one modernization that no one complained about: air conditioning.

Still, the place remains a kind of small-town cultural icon, a tether around which Catholic life on the island--and, today, elsewhere--revolves.

“I loved it when I was here,” said former choir director Sharon Jackson, who now lives in Washington, D.C. “It’s intimate. Most Catholic churches are huge and impersonal, but it’s not that way there. Even though they’re not actually a parish, they act like one.”

Jackson knew about larger parishes, having conducted the choir at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Costa Mesa before being asked by Sharpe to take over the choir at St. John Vianney.

“I had lived (in Orange County) for about 20 years before I started conducting there and I never even knew the place was there until monsignor called me. I had no idea there was a church on that block.”

There were, she conceded, distractions.

“It’s always so pretty in that neighborhood. You walk over that bridge in the morning to go to church and it’s just gorgeous most of the time. It’s the perfect place to worship in modern terms: You come into this little church that’s surrounded by shops and restaurants and traffic and you just leave all the hustle and bustle outside.”

Said Nick Krupka, the current choir director, “It’s lovely to be there at 8:30 in the morning when the neighborhood isn’t crowded and there are some of the guys hanging out next door at Dad’s (a snack stand). You get a real small-town feeling.

“And inside the chapel, you’re not a great distance away from anything that’s happening. It’s like being in the second row of a theater. I think people would rather go to church there than anyplace else.”